Rachel Reeves considering freeze of private rent?

It's easy to get people behind punishing the private landlord - the true wealth and big business will never pay. 'Taxing the rich' will never actually mean that, it will sound good while not touching those who actually make the rules.

There's also the issue with "ghost apartments" like in New York City - rent controlled apartments where the cost of renovations the landlord is supposed to do exceed the rent they are allowed to collect, so they leave them empty. I think they estimate that over 50,000 apartments are currently empty in NYC as ghost apartments, in a city with an absolutely insane housing shortage - which then pushes rents up for everyone else as there is less housing supply available.

www.thefp.com/p/why-new-york-city-has-50000-ghost

I wonder what the issue would be with offering owners of unattractive homes a refurb which would bring them up to sellable value, on condition that they then are sold on the open market at genuinely affordable prices and with a small percentage going to the local authority. Everybody wins. Maybe that's the kind of price control that the next generations would actually thank us for. I know nothing about town planning so no doubt this idea has been tossed out many times before. Could it ever be done without private investment? Am I overestimating the number of unsellable, privately owned homes? But if you can manage to attract young people with solid, if not high, southern incomes, the local area will get a good and more or less harmlessly gentrifying boost which could work in tandem with state investment in the local area - it wouldn't all have to be the state dragging things forward.

The immediate result is that landlords will be jacking up rents asap to offset this vague threat. I don't think this government has a clue - and I voted for them.

Nah- none of this happened when the electricity price cap where introduced

social housing rents were not only frrozen for some years but actually reduced in some cases- no one hit the streets over their landlords taking the hit did they?

Nah- none l

Will reduce the tax take too. Rents wont increase with inflation, therefore tax taken on rental income will not rise with inflation, therefore shortfall in projected tax take, therefore - income tax rises for us again! Probably in the form of thresholds remaining so there isn't civil unrest, which there would be if the general populous understood income tax.

My parents have just this morning been served 2 months notice on their flat, after 8 years - the landlord says it's to get them out before the new tenants rights come into effect on 1st of May, and then she will have the flexibility to either sell, or rent it as a new tenancy at a higher rate if this rent freeze comes in.

They'll be ok in the long run, but now they need to find somewhere fast and anywhere they move will be more expensive now, even if it then gets frozen for a year. And the rent on their current flat is only going one way for any new tenant - up.

I think this will just mean more LLs kick their tenants out and sell up. If your mortgage payments go up and you can't charge more rent on your property, are you expected to just absorb that cost? Fuck that! I'd sell up. This government is so fucking clueless and inept. Everything they do compounds the damage that they are doing to the British people and the British economy. Their renters' rights bill has already led to thousands of people being evicted from their homes and this won't help.

So rather than increase the rent by CPI/ RPI or a local inflator you’re suggesting the landlord would’ve passed the increase in their monthly mortgage payment directly onto the tenant?

this is why underfunded private landlords shouldn’t exist, frankly. Turn all the stock over to housing association and other corporate landlords and get some professionalism and financing behind it

Labour are panicking about the threat from the Green Party, so floating the idea of rent control......but half-arsing it, as always.

Most things she touches turn to shit, I can see this backfiring massively, with landlords preemptively raising rents.

Very few people pay anywhere near as much for their food as they do for their rent.

If that coincides with their mortgage going up due to the end of a fixed rate deal it could be a big difference

Good grief, she's absolutely clueless. I'm not a landlord so no skin in the game, but Labour have already massively damaged the rental market with the latest law/regulation changes and private landlords are selling in the droves. She's going to absolutely kill the private rental market.

As others have said, they need to be concentrating on house building and controlling immigration. They also need to be tackling the huge number of unoccupied buildings, conversion of empty/derelict retail/industrial to housing, and encouraging downsizing for people living in homes too big for them.

In principle, no, but given the way rents have soared in the area where we have our sole rental, I am inclined to agree.

Just yesterday dh emailed me a new rental, close to and much the same as ours - except that ours is IMO nicer. A 2 bed maisonette in SW17 - for £700 pcm more than ours! Admittedly we have always kept ours lower than usual for the type and area - well worth it for retaining very good tenants - for us anyway - but this really is taking the greedy piss.

It’s just student politics. No real understanding of the effects.

I am not a fan of landlords but I think this would be silly and unworkable.

She should instead look at measures to reduce energy prices and stop utility companies general profiteering as well as freezing public transport fares increases and supporting businesses to help improve the employment market.

Some landlords might be coming off low mortgage rates this year and having to increase the rent as a result and a freeze would just mean them chosing to sell instead which helps no one...

Many landlords have already chosen to sell because of recent tenants legislation and that would just accelerate the process.

Food isn’t very expensive compared to rent though.

Benefits help pay private rents, I think that was the point the poster was making

Why not a freeze on food prices? That would genuinely help everybody.
Oh wait, I bet supermarkets wouldn’t accept that, easier to impose it to individual landlords who can’t push back.